


And I would give all this and heaven too...

by Werepirechick



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: A little bit of both?, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Blood & Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dimension Travel, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, i'm a writer of simple needs, one of those needs is these characters getting a happy ending, this makes it all seem a lot worse than i plan it to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21819805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/pseuds/Werepirechick
Summary: Ash is silent for a long moment, staring at her glowing arm.“You found a what?” she asks it.“I’m not entirely sure, actually?”Sal replies.“The Voices said it’s like,time,basically? They didn’t explain it very well, but I think that bit is true.”“You’re talking to voices?”“Not that kind. I. I think?”--Or--There might still be a way to claim their happy ending after all.
Relationships: Ashley Campbell & Sal Fisher & Larry Johnson & Todd Morrison, Sal Fisher & Travis Phelps, Todd Morrison/Neil
Comments: 12
Kudos: 58





	And I would give all this and heaven too...

**Author's Note:**

> i actually really enjoyed the final game installment! for an indie game it really went all out at the end, and i genuinely applaud portable moose for its creation.
> 
> i just also wanna give these guys a happy ending. because i have the inspo and the ability.
> 
> specific tw for this first chpt is brief suicidal conversation.

“ _Alright, so… not to sound ungrateful or anything. But this sucks.”_

“You’re telling me. I’ve got a- a _you_ in my arm, and everyone we care about is...”

“ _Sorry.”_

“Not your fault fate is bullshit.”

The blue glow of Ash’s veined arm pulses faintly, flickering with Sal’s presence. Ash can feel his power feeding into her body from it, through her heart and everything else. Even if she’s become more accustomed to the shared flow of energy, Ash still feels like shivering sometimes. It’s such a weird sensation.

Using an _arm_ as an anchor to the physical plane isn’t any less weird, for Sal. Never mind that it’s an arm belonging to one of his best friends. He’ll pull away, sometimes, drifting back to the elsewhere he can visit, nowadays. But, whenever he does, Ash’s control of her (ruined) limb becomes harder, eventually going numb and… dead.

This isn’t what they wanted. To be tied together to even function, for the duration of… well, however long Ash will live. Which is getting awkward pretty fast, honestly.

They’re sitting on the steps of what used to be Sal’s home, with Todd and… Neil. Their last remaining friend is inside, wandering the house with a sort of stricken despair that neither Sal nor Ash is up to dealing with right now. The rest of Nockfell around them is as equally haunted and desolate feeling as the building to their back.

The tally is still going up, on the news. Entire countries are nowhere near done taking a count of people who died in the almost-apocalypse. The last update on the toll was accompanied by footage of shadow monsters, still rampaging across the earth even without the cult’s direction. Sal and Ash reached to turn it off together. They crushed the remote doing so.

It’s been a hellish few days, trying to drag themselves into something resembling ‘living’. It doesn’t feel worth it to- that much Sal and Ash agree on, and they don’t have to ask Todd how he feels. Nockfell was the epicenter of the entire doomsday plot; it makes sense that its inhabitants were hit hardest.

There’s just… nothing left, after it all. Not for them. Not for anyone in this god forsaken town.

“ _Ash?”_ Sal asks, threading tendrils closer to her heart, feeling it’s beat.

“Yeah, Sal?” she replies, subdued.

“… _This doesn’t feel like we won,”_ he confesses.

Ash laughs humorlessly. “Not really, no. Got any ideas on how to fix that?”

Sal doesn’t have lungs to sigh with, but the impression gets across in Ash’s mind. “ _Not really, no,”_ he echoes her.

The sun is dipping close to the horizon, now. Clouds are gathering over its sunset, threatening a rainstorm. The shadows have grown deeper by the hour, inching over what remains of Nockfell and bringing with them fresh threats.

“ _You ate today, right?”_ Sal asks, as Ash stands up and stretches.

“Mm,” is her noncommittal reply. Ash hasn’t felt hungry since before things started going to pieces; if she’s taking advantage of Sal having lost touch with what having a body is like, well. It’s not the worst thing she’s done recently.

A blot of darkness slithers over the pavement as they exit the gate. Ash flexes her fingers- Sal’s energy crackles under and along her skin. The bones in her heavily scarred arm creak and grind, unnatural for what they’ve done to them.

The blot flees. The shadow monsters won’t be at full strength just yet; not until the sun is truly gone. But it doesn’t hurt to start a meandering patrol before then. Maybe the effort is pointless, given Todd is… still in possession of powers far above any roving monster, but it gives them something to do. Something that feels like purpose.

And, they don’t want shadows getting bold enough to come inside the house. It’s a small, empty gesture, but… this was somewhere that the best things in their lives were. The last pieces of happy memories, of Sal and Ash with their friends.

They won’t see it tainted.

Droplets of rain fall on Ash’s hair and shoulders as they walk. Sal, coiled around her ulna and radius bones, can hardly feel the cool touch. He just sadly adds it to the list of sensations he won’t feel ever again.

The first shadow comes for them not more than a few minutes after true nightfall. Ash dodges and brings her arm down in a strike, Sal’s brilliant arcs of energy backing it up.

It doesn’t fix anything, but there’s a vicious satisfaction in standing over the monster as it dissolves into the growing puddles.

-/-

Sal has taken to drifting only when Ash is resting. It’s not fair to rob her of her finer motor skills while she’s awake, even if the most they’re doing right now is sitting around, waiting for something to happen.

Sal keeps away from where Jim Johnson resides. He’s not sure what the man- or former man- will say about how it all played out. How would he even talk to him, anyway? _Hey there, sorry your son and wife died for nothing. How have you been?_

Sal was supposed to be some kind of savior, or whatever the prophecies tried to shove onto him. It doesn’t feel like he saved _anyone._

What he wouldn’t give to see Larry again. They’d barely had any time at all, all of it taken up by world saving, and Larry had looked so _tired-_ Sal had so many things he wanted to say, and he’d felt Ash’s desire to do the same, and then they didn’t even get to say a real _goodbye._

Sal sometimes finds unoccupied hollows of darkness, in his aimless drifting. He’ll rage in those empty spaces, throwing off bolts of power into the nothingness. Scream at fate and god and the stupid fucking people that ruined his and everyone else’s lives. His already unstable form will devolve into pure static when he does that, expanding into shapes far from human and roiling with his emotions.

It only serves to tire him out. Sal doesn’t feel even a little better, after. Sliding back into his original reality, rejoining Ash’s lifeforce, he’ll curl up in her bones and rest for a time. He always feels guilty for it, like a parasitic creature that’s attached itself to a host. Sal is dead, he shouldn’t be here anymore. Doesn’t deserve to be, either.

But he can’t leave. Not without costing Ash her life, likely speaking. And besides that, Sal- he’s scared. Of being without her and Todd. He hasn’t forgotten what Jim Johnson warped himself into; Sal broods on the thought, sometimes, of ending up like that. Whether it’d been to help others or not, Sal… he can’t stand the idea of becoming so _removed_ from his human life.

The Voices, in the dark and light. They’d talked about him freeing himself from emotions and earthly ties. Frankly, the concept scares the shit out of him.

All in all, everything fucking sucks. A lot of people died, the world is full of monsters, and it feels like he failed everyone.

Ash feels the same. Their emotions mingle, sometimes, ebbing and flowing as they fight together. Thrashing shadow monsters is as much of an outlet as it is self-punishment. Sal _wants_ Ash to stop doing it, wants her/him to stop _agreeing_ with his/her thoughts of self-deprecation, but- they’re so fucking sad, all the time. They’re angry and grieving and it _hurts._

And nothing can make it better.

-/-

“Is Sal here?” Todd asks, a week after they brought him home. He’s sitting at the table, not eating the food Ash and Sal made him, dressed in one of Neil’s old shirts.

He looks like death. The glint of red in his eyes doesn’t help that.

“He’s here,” Ash replies for Sal, pushing eggs around the pan. Her lightning scars ripple with blue light as she answers.

Todd nods, gaze unfocused. He’s quiet for a long moment. Ash adds salt to the eggs, ignoring the lack of hunger in her stomach.

“You should have killed me with everyone else,” Todd says. Ash drops the spatula. Sal’s grip spasms and breaks the pan’s handle.

“Don’t say that,” Ash grits out, turning off the element. She doesn’t bother trying to salvage the spilled eggs burning on it.

“It might have slowed the cult’s progress,” Todd continues. “Or it might not have. All I care is that Neil might have gotten to _live_ if he hadn’t hung around this fucking town. Hadn’t tried to save _me.”_

“Sal, tell him he’s wrong,” Ash says hoarsely, head bent low. “Sal. _Tell him.”_

Sal doesn’t know what to say. Todd wouldn’t be able to hear him even if he did. He writhes in _sorrow-apology-regret-shame-grief_ and Ash chokes on his emotions’ turmoil.

“ _Shit,”_ Ash hisses, punching the stove with her left arm. The crunch of metal and resulting dent doesn’t do anything to alleviate her anger.

Todd gets up and walks out of the room, an apathetic ghost of his former self. Ash curses more and snatches up the broken pan, throwing it on the floor and sending it skittering. One eye is dry, while the bloodshot, cloudy one streams tears down her face as she and Sal wordlessly yell.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to _win._ They were supposed to get a happy ending. There was supposed to be some kind of karmic repayment for all the things they suffered through.

And what they got is this. Survivor’s guilt. An empty tomb of a house. Blood of millions of people on their hands because they didn’t stop this sooner.

Sal’s thoughts of _should have found a different way, should have figured out how to come back sooner,_ mixes with Ash’s thoughts of _should have believed them, should have seen the truth,_ and find the same conclusion: _this could have ended differently._

Ash takes deep breaths, standing still until she doesn’t feel like breaking anything else. Sal keeps crying through her left eye, unable to push back the grief so soon after the floodgates opened. They end up on the couch, knees drawn close. Ash dabs a tissue at Sal’s tear tracks, while he sends tendrils of power further into her chest, surrounding her heart in as much of a hug as he’s able.

Music starts playing, eventually, somewhere else in the house. One of the CDs Sal got for Christmas one year, from Larry. It’s muffled by the walls, and for a moment, as they close their eyes, Sal and Ash can pretend everything is normal again. Neil is upstairs in his and Todd’s room, helping his boyfriend with a project. Larry is catching a nap on Sal’s bed, tired after packing boxes over from his place for the move. Gizmo is nestled in a patch of sunlight somewhere, likely to emerge only for dinner.

Footsteps come into the room, a long while later. Ash and Sal open their eyes as Todd sits down on the couch with them. Their friend doesn’t say anything about his suicidal confession, and they don’t either.

They’re all too tired to pick a fight over something that, in all honesty, they’ve all been thinking about anyway.

-/-

Sal wanders further than he has before, the next time Ash goes to sleep.

He tells himself he’s not running away, but lying has never been something Sal cultivated skills for. He’ll be back, though. He wouldn’t leave Ash or Todd without a goodbye, never mind that he can’t even consider abandoning Ash to whatever would happen if they separated.

Through the intersections and crossovers and corridors of realities, Sal drifts on and on. The power to do so has gotten easier every time he’s gone away like this; becoming something familiar, like he’s relearning how to ride a bike. That’s not the most disturbing thing he’s ever had happen to him, so. He’s not terribly concerned about it.

Mostly. The worry about becoming like… whatever Jim Johnson became, still circles his thoughts now and again. It’s different for Sal, though. He has Ash as a tether, drawing him back to the physical world after each venture. He’s not going to lose himself.

…Not if he can help it, at least.

He passes majority of alternate dimensions by without much interest. Some have physical manifestations, but many are just There and more feeling than anything. They all feel similar- akin to his original reality, but somehow flimsy. Insubstantial. Nothing in them matters, not to him or his problems anyway. Sal doesn’t have desire right now to explore them, so he keeps going onwards.

Up until he brushes a seam of- something. He pulls up short, startled by the sudden change in the landscape. Prodding it carefully, it thrums under his touch. Echoes back into his senses differently than dimensional borders do.

**Do you dare to delve deeper?** asks the pesky Voice of Darkness. Sal hasn’t heard from it in a while, he’d almost started to hope he was alone again.

“Into what?” Sal asks the cryptic voice.

_Something forbidden, even to one of your kind,_ replies the Voice of Light, obviously disliking whatever Sal has found.

“Well, that’s not ominous as shit or anything,” Sal grumbles. He presses harder against the woven not-dimensional border. He could swear he feels the Light retreat in disgust, while the Dark edges closer with keen interest.

**It is your right, if you so wish it,** says the Voice from the Dark.

“What is? Straight answer this time, please. I’m not in the mood for riddles.”

_Unraveling of the fabric of history is dangerous,_ cautions the Voice from the Light.

**You would throw the present and future into chaos.**

_And it would only hold a slim chance of playing out in your favor._ _Would you risk so many lives for your own selfish wishes?_

**Would you forsake such an opportunity on behalf of faceless masses? Think of the ones you’ve lost.**

_Think of the ones still here._

**W** _h_ **a** _t_ **w** _i_ **l** _l_ **y** _o_ **u** _d_ **o** _?_

“Hold up a second,” Sal says, frozen with the strange seam in his grasp. “Are you saying I could _control time?_ That I could-” _fix everything?_ He can’t bring himself to say the words aloud, scared of jinxing it.

The Voices are silent again. Great. Real helpful. Sal runs his senses along the metaphorical- or metaphysical?- threads of what is apparently _time_ _itself._ This shouldn’t be such a shock after becoming a transdimensional entity, but still, _holy fuck._

What is he even supposed to do with this information? With this terrifying power over something that definitely could result in things getting even _worse._

Sal pulls himself away from the seams of non-reality, headed back towards his anchor in the living world. He’s in over his head with this one. Before he so much as touches the threads of time again, he _absolutely_ needs to talk with Ash and Todd.

-/-

Ash is silent for a long moment, staring at her glowing arm.

“You found a what?” she asks it.

“ _I’m not entirely sure, actually?”_ Sal replies. “ _The Voices said it’s like,_ time _, basically? They didn’t explain it very well, but I think that bit is true.”_

“You’re talking to voices?”

“ _Not that kind. I. I think?”_

Ash rubs her eyes. This isn’t something she would’ve wanted to try wrapping her head around so soon after waking up.

“Let’s ask Todd,” Ash suggests, standing up from the couch. She stretches, grimacing at the ache in her back. “Maybe he’s got notes N- that we didn’t find. He’s had notes for almost everything so far.”

“ _Hope it’s not more prophecy nonsense,”_ Sal grumbles to her, his annoyance tickling at Ash’s own emotions. She nods absently; it would be an unusual and _very welcome_ change to find easy answers.

“Todd?” Ash calls, reaching the top of the stairs. Their friend is sitting on the bed, staring at the late afternoon sky through the window. He’s got a picture in his hands- one of the many taped up around the house, of him and Neil.

Ash looks to the deep, deep circles under Todd’s eyes. Looks away quickly, not wanting to stare too long at the red light shining in his gaze.

They’re all hurting so, so deeply. But at least she and Sal have each other; their conjoined consciousness provides the strangest comfort in the worst moments. Todd… Todd has whatever is left of the Red-Eyes demon in his head. They can’t even imagine what that’s like, carrying the legacy of the source of their combined tragedies.

“Todd,” Ash repeats, brushing away her melancholy, “Sal… found something, in that place he goes sometimes.”

“ _Places,”_ Sal corrects quietly. The in-between he travels to is too vast to be _a_ place.

“Places,” Ash amends.

Todd doesn’t respond, but there’s a subtle turn of his head. Not quite acknowledgement, but close enough they know he’s not too far gone into his thoughts right now.

“ _Ask him,”_ Sal prompts gently, almost _eager,_ and it’s so good to feel from him after days of grey. Ash touches her fingers to her other wrist, curling them around it and squeezing.

“Did your research ever come across anything to do with time?” Ash asks, trying to quell the hope that wants to rise in her. It’s too soon, it’ll kill her if this goes nowhere. “Sal’s been to dimensions where time wasn’t working the same as ours, and… this is related, far as we can tell right now? He thinks he’s found something that would let him influence _our_ timeline.”

And for the first time since Ash and Sal dragged their friend out from under rubble, a flicker of life comes back into Todd’s eyes.

“What?” Todd asks in a small, croaking voice. “That’s- wh- how?”

“Yeah,” Ash says, managing a smile. “I had a similar reaction, too.”

“And you’re sure that’s what he said.”

“He’s in my head, so. Yeah, pretty sure.”

“ _Is it really that crazy after everything that’s happened?”_ Sal questions, rippling light up and down Ash’s scarred arm. He’s restless, wanting to start on research.

“Sal wants to get to looking for more information,” Ash says, watching Todd’s expression. “We get that you’ve… that you’re still recovering, but. We’d appreciate having you help us.”

Todd finally, _finally_ turns his head to look at them. Ash’s left eye grows glossy as she and Sal meet his cautiously hopeful gaze.

“I have some ideas of where to start,” he says.

Ash and Sal smile.

**Author's Note:**

> some artistic liberty is taken with canon in this, oops.


End file.
